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THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY NATIONWIDE

June 1, 2016

Rory McIlroy

Dublin, Ohio

THE MODERATOR: We'll get right into it. We welcome Rory McIlroy to the interview room at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. Obviously coming in off a victory in homeland at the Irish Open. That was pretty fun for us to see and what a great finish that was. I'm sure you're carrying some of that form into this tournament. I bet you're looking forward to it here.

RORY McILROY: I certainly hope so. Hopefully, it hasn't went off in a week. Yeah, it's nice to be back here at Muirfield Village. I missed the tournament last year just because of scheduling. If I had played it, I think it would have been the sixth tournament in a row leading up to the U.S. Open. So I just needed a little bit of a break.

It's nice to be back. I got back on the golf course early this morning and just remembered what a great venue this is. So to get back and play here again, I'm excited about it. I'm excited about it coming off the back of the win in Ireland. So, yeah, I got a good look at the course today. Obviously, I've got a pretty cool grouping the next couple of days with Justin and Jordan. Yeah, looking forward to it.

THE MODERATOR: It looks like you've rounded out your day today, before you go to the practice range, with a nice little finish on 18, holing a 7 iron from the fairway?

RORY McILROY: Yeah, I holed a 7 iron from 184. So it's always nice not to need a putter on the last. Nice way to round out the Pro-Am for sure.

Q. Rory, you mentioned the other part of the big three. Do you buy into this? Do you think it's a great thing for golf? How competitive is it between you three?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I kept saying I don't -- like the three of us are at the top of the World Rankings, but I think it really does the other players an injustice because the fields are so deep out here and there's so many other great young players. So just to focus on us three, okay, we're at the top of the rankings and we've won a few majors between us, but I think it's just unfair to focus on us.

You've got the likes of Rickie Fowler, Patrick Reed, Dustin Johnson, Hideki Matsuyama, Justin Thomas, who we're playing with tomorrow, Brooks Koepka, there's so many great young players out there. We're the top three at the minute. Obviously, we're working to keep it that way and try to be No. 1, but at the same time, there's a lot of guys just behind us, if we slip, they want to take that place.

Q. Rory, going back to the win in Ireland, just kind of how important was that or really how frustrated were you getting? It's not like you played poorly, but you talked about how Dubai felt like a long time ago, and it's clear by your body language you kind of weren't happy necessarily.
RORY McILROY: Yeah, it was funny, where was it? Well, I didn't even have dinner with my parents. I came back, I flew back after THE PLAYERS and landed in Dublin.

Met mom and dad in the hotel on Monday night, and the first thing my dad said to me is, You looked miserable on the course. I was like, well, I'm not miserable. I'm not happy but -- yeah, it's been a frustrating few months because I feel like my play has been better than the results have been dictating, but at the same time, it's not all about just playing well. You need to play well when it matters, and that's what I was not doing.

I put myself in position this year to play well going into weekends or final rounds, and not being able to do it, that was the frustrating thing. So to finally get over the line and get that win in Ireland, there was relief in there, but at the same time, to -- I never knew how much it meant to me to win at home until I actually did. When it hit me and to see all the people supporting out there, it was really cool.

I wish I would have had a win earlier than that point of the year, but it was a pretty nice way to get that first one of the year.

Q. Did you need it? Did you need a win?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think so. I think I did need a win. As much as I was trying to just keep focused on playing well and focus on the process and it will happen sooner or later, I think all my patience was sort of dried up. I needed to -- and it looked, for a little part of the back nine there on Sunday, that it wasn't going to happen. Anyway, I pulled a couple of shots out of the bag when I needed to. Thankfully, it went my way.

Q. Rory, talking to other players, it sounds like it's sort of a challenge to spend as much time on shots from like 40 yards in, including bunker shots, as it is to spend time on the range with your driving. Is that the case for you? What makes it so hard to just commit to that practice time on the shorter shots?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think, with the amount of balls we hit and the amount of practice that we do, you're always trying to figure out ways to keep it fresh and to keep yourself interested -- not interested, I think that's the wrong word. But to keep yourself motivated. So playing little games with yourself or trying to -- and I think, between my team, whether it be Michael, my coach, or J.P., my caddie, we find good ways to do that, just different sort of little challenges.

But I think, if you're practicing on your own, I think that's one of the things I'm lucky -- not every guy out here gets to practice with their caddie and their coach every single day, where I'm lucky enough that I sort of can do that. So I think that keeps it fresh and keeps it -- keeps me focused for the length of time.

I would say that, between my long game and my short game, I probably spend as much time, if not more, on my short game because I can go through my bag and hit shots, and I can get that done in 45 minutes to an hour and feel pretty good about it, whereas there's times you're on the putting green or the chipping green for two or three hours.

Q. This is going back some ways, Rory, except you've previously said that the 2011 Masters, your loss there was the most important day of your career to that point. What specifically did you learn about yourself from that, and how did you use that to kind of rebound in such a resounding way two months later at The Open?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think I learned a lot about myself in terms of how I handled the situation, how I handled the pressure. I was -- I didn't focus on myself enough. I focused on what was going on around me. The one thing I learned was I can only control what I'm doing. I can't control what anyone else is doing. And as long as I'm in control of that, I feel, if I play well enough, I'll win. And that was the big thing for me because I was -- I played with Cabrera that day, and I was focused on what he was doing. And then Charl, who ultimately won the tournament, he got off to this great start ahead of me, chipped in on 1, he held a second shot on 3. So I was all of a sudden looking at all these guys around me instead of focusing on what I need to do, and then it got to a point where it all just sort of unravelled on the back nine.

Yeah, it was just more for me, when I got myself in that position again, I just needed to focus on myself and focus on my little swing thoughts or things that I thought were important and not care about anyone else in the field really.

Q. Rory, could you give us a better sense of perspective, maybe your understanding on the difference between holing 7 irons in the practice round today or hitting those two par 5s at the Irish Open versus being so close to that? Is it just time? Is it practice? Because it seems like both you and Spieth and Day at times, maybe the last year, have gone through the same experience, so close, frustrated, and then all of a sudden it happens? Why does it happen or how does it happen?
RORY McILROY: I think it's a buildup of -- because, obviously, if you're frustrated or you're not happy about something, you're always going to come back the next day and work on it and work on it and work on it until you finally get it right.

Like I would say this year, one of the things that hasn't been good would be my wedge play and my distance control. I feel like I've worked on that quite a lot, and it's gotten a lot better to the point where now I'm very comfortable and I feel like it's one of the better parts of my game. So you're always trying to chip away at things that maybe aren't quite up to the standard of what you believe they should be.

And everyone has -- I've always been big on this. Everyone has their strengths. Everyone has the foundation of their game, and mine is obviously my driving. If I put the ball in play, I'm always going to do well. Other people do things a little bit differently and have other strengths, like, obviously, Jason's very good, but his short game is something -- I mean, I wanted that in Austin at the Match Play. I thought he put himself in positions where he couldn't get up and down, now all of a sudden, he's a couple inches from the hole. And then obviously you see what Jordan did last week on the greens on the back nine.

So we all do it different ways, but I think you can keep chipping away at those weaknesses, but if you keep your strengths as strong as they possibly are and then just improve in different ways, like my wedge play, that's what really gets you from playing well and finishing in the top 10 to winning, I think.

Q. Just to follow, this is off where we were going with this, but there's a release coming out at 4:00 today about the Tour taking the WGC Cadillac down to South America -- excuse me, to Mexico City. If that plays out that way, what would your reaction be? Did you miss Doral? Did you like Doral? What would be your concerns about going to Mexico City and playing the WGC down there?
RORY McILROY: Well, they're called the World Golf Championship for a reason. I always felt that having three of them in the United States wasn't really spreading the game. So I think that's good news, you're getting at least one of those outside the States. And it's not as if we haven't been going to Mexico before. It's quite ironic that we're going to Mexico after being at Doral. We just jump over the wall.

But we've been going down to Mexico, whether it's been a World Cup or a Champions Tour going down there. We have the PGA Tour Latino America. So I think it's a good move. I think it really is. To have a World Golf Championship outside of the States, if it's going to be on that same date, obviously, it's a little more inconvenient for me being in Palm Beach Gardens and having just to drive an hour down the road to Doral. But it's a World Golf Championship, it's going to be, obviously, a great prize fund. It's going to have all the best players in the world there. I'm sure it's going to be a good golf course.

And maybe if -- I don't know what they're thinking of doing, but even if it was on the way back from the West Coast, sort of go from L.A. to Mexico and then back for Honda or something like that, it could work. So, yeah, I'll be going to Mexico next year, and I think it's at a high enough altitude as well, I think. It's 7,500 feet up there. So Zika and mosquitoes really isn't a concern either.

Q. Rory, Jason's on a pretty incredible run, 7 in 17. You've been on runs like that in the past. What's the hardest thing keeping that sort of thing going?
RORY McILROY: I don't know. I think my good golf has come in spells. I think it's sort of you build yourself up, and you have to maybe let yourself down a little bit. I think Jason does that so well. Because he really doesn't play very frequently, he really picks and chooses his schedule, and I think that's a good thing to be able to build up to playing your best golf and maybe have a week or two off to let yourself come back down again and then build yourself back up. When we talk about peaking for the right tournaments or peaking for the majors, that's really what we're talking about.

I feel like I've done that pretty well over the years, and I feel like Jason does that well also because of the way he schedules and taking breaks and taking time off and working on his game and coming back fully ready to play. I think a big thing is preparation. If you can prepare and be ready for each and every event you play, you've got the best possible chance to do well.

Q. And on the other side of that, when someone's in a run like that, whether it be you or him or someone else, how do you take them down?
RORY McILROY: Play better than them.

Q. Just that simple?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, you just have to play better. I don't think you can rely on people to drop their standards or drop their form. You just have to go out and shoot a better score.

Q. Rory, while you say it would be unfair to focus on the top three players in the world, what value do you think it has in the game to have three players such as the three of you guys right now? What value?
RORY McILROY: I think for young people playing golf and getting into the game, it's a great image. You've got Jordan coming in at 22, 23, and you've got the older guys like me and Jason at 27 and 28. But, again, you've got all these young players, and I think -- I'm always quick to say -- to add all these other young guys in as well because I don't feel like you can't just view golf as just the three of us. There's so many other players like that that are so good.

I think golf is in great shape at the minute, and it's in good hands. The players that we have at the top of the game are obviously very good -- great golfers, but at the same time, they're very respectable human beings, and they do it the right way, and they do the right things. And I think that's very important as well.

Q. Just as an unrelated question, Rory, you've played under great expectation for a long time. The NBA Finals are about to happen with the Warriors having won 73 games and LeBron James in his sixth consecutive Final. From your view, who has more at stake?
RORY McILROY: I'd say the Cavs. Obviously, Golden State won it last year. LeBron's trying to win a championship at home. I'd say the Cavs are -- that's a tough one to call. If you look at it the way they played their last series, you'd say the Cavs are playing better and Golden State just sort of -- well, they didn't sneak it out. They were unbelievable that Game 7, but I'd say the Cavs have more at stake.

Q. Who's your pick?
RORY McILROY: I don't know. I mean, I'm in Ohio. So I can't really -- (laughter).

THE MODERATOR: Let's go to the next question.

RORY McILROY: Yes, keep it to golf, please.

Q. Rory, Trump said that he had talked to all the top players about trying to pressure the PGA Tour into keeping the event in Miami. I'm just wondering if that's true, if you spoke with them, and if you knew the players had spoken with the Tour about trying to keep the tournament there?
RORY McILROY: I'm not sure. I definitely wasn't a part of any of those conversations. I like Doral. I thought the redesign they did on it with Gill Hans was very, very good. It's always hard, I mean, to go away from a venue that has been such a permanent fixture on the schedule for such a long time.

But, again, I think one of the criticisms of the World Golf Championships is they weren't global enough. We have one in China, but apart from that, we had one in Valderrama, one in England, one in Ireland, but apart from that, we haven't really been spreading them around the globe as first planned, which makes sense. I mean, we play the majority of our golf around here, and I get that.

But I think to go to Mexico City is a good move. I really think it is, for the World Golf Championships to sort of take it around the world, it's a good thing.

Q. Back to low altitude and Rio for a minute, there's some interpretation that you left yourself some wiggle room on Zika and the Olympics based on your comments to the BBC a couple weeks ago. Did you leave yourself some wiggle room? And what becomes the ultimate deciding factor for you in terms of where you're getting your information, et cetera?
RORY McILROY: Even since then, I've sought out some advice, and I had two dead shoulders for about four days last week because I got my shots and whatever I needed to get for going down there. Obviously, there's no vaccination for Zika.

I think what the health experts are really worried about, it's not the individual cases. It's the fact that 500,000 people go to Rio, extra people, and they spend three weeks at the Games, they go back out of Rio, and some might have contracted Zika and don't know about it, and then all of a sudden, instead of it being this virus that's contained in a certain part of the world, it's now a global epidemic. And I think that's the real concern.

So for me to go down there, even if I was to get Zika, it's not -- you know, it's six months, and it's a virus, and it works its way out of your system, and it's nice that we can come back, and feel like you've had some of the symptoms down there, you can get tested for it, and it's either a yes or a no you've had it. It's a virus. It works its way out of your system, and you become immune to it or whatever.

But, yeah, I'm ready to play. I feel like the advice I've sought out over the past ten days has put my mind at ease and makes me more comfortable going down there knowing that, even if I do contract Zika, it's not the end of the world. It takes six months to pass through your system and you're fine.

Q. What kind of crowd do you think we're going to have down at the golf course? And if you were just a regular guy going to the summer Olympics, would you be worried at all?
RORY McILROY: No. I mean, I think you're going to get golf fans down there, plain and simple. You're going to get people who want to watch golf. High level golf hasn't been played in Brazil for quite a long time either. But if you go to the Olympics, you're going to want to watch track and field. You're going to want to watch the swimming, the things that you see on TV.

I had this argument with someone last week talking about golf being in the Olympics and how it can grow the game, but fencing is in the Olympics, and how many people watch that?

So it's great that golf is in the games. I can't tell you now how it's going to grow the game at all, but people will watch it on TV, and whether they see it and say, okay, I want to have a go at that, I want to try that. If parents want to get their kids into it from a certain country because they want them to be Olympic champions, that remains to be seen, but you're going to get golf fans watching down there just like you do at any other golf event.

Q. Rory, are you going to Oakmont on Monday? And what have you heard or are hearing maybe from any of the guys who have been there the last couple weeks?
RORY McILROY: I'm going to go to Oakmont Monday and Tuesday. I've spoken to a few of the guys that have been up there, and they just say it's hard, just hard. I know they pride themselves on being the hardest golf course in the United States, and, yeah, you hit it in the bunkers and you've got to go sideways, and you hit it in the rough and you can't get to the green, and even if you hit it on the fairway, it's hard to hit the greens. So obviously, par is going to be very much a premium there.

I'll be able to tell you more when I go there Monday and Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it. I've heard a lot of good things about it. It will definitely be a challenge, that's for sure.

Q. What's been the most significant personal experience you've ever had with Jack?
RORY McILROY: I went to Jack's office in North Palm Beach in June of 2014. Yeah, it was just after this tournament. It was when I was getting ready for the U.S. Open. It was actually -- it was more of a chat about -- it started off about building a brand and all that sort of stuff and how he's done it over the years. It ended up him giving me a swing lesson in his office.

And I think he -- I don't know when he had a hip replacement, but he was making a swing, and this thing creaked, and it was quite funny. It went from that to talking about golf course design and licensing products and all this stuff to him giving me a swing lesson in his office, which was pretty cool.

Q. And then you won two majors?
RORY McILROY: Yeah. Maybe I need to look out for him this week and see if he can give me any more.

THE MODERATOR: We appreciate your time. Maybe you'll have another significant moment with Jack on the 18th green this week.

RORY McILROY: Thank you.

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